


After Apotheosis

by Current521



Category: The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals - Team StarKid
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 09:24:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20889833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Current521/pseuds/Current521
Summary: Paul explodes the meteor. It is too late. It is not enough.





	After Apotheosis

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to "Confrontation" from Jekyll & Hyde and thought, huh, wouldn't it be fun to write a dialogue with only one character? That's not what happened, but that's how ideas work, I guess.

“I don’t! Like! Musicals!” Paul pulled the pin on the grenade, with some difficulty. He could give up. There was an increasingly insistent part of him that wanted to.

But he had a chance to save Emma, so he had to pick a god and pray; he pulled the pin, and the meteor exploded, as did the people around him, and himself.

Well, they didn’t exactly explode. They were thrown aside by the blast, and hitting the ground definitely hurt, but not as much as he’d feared. He didn’t feel the explosion at all.

Paul laid on the ground for a few seconds, then picked himself up. It looked like he was the first one to get up, but none of the aliens looked like they’d died, either. He took stock; his clothes had been burnt, and badly, but he himself was… Fine. No burns, no broken bones, not as much as a bruise. The meteor was destroyed, though.

The other aliens began to wake, and Paul could feel them in his head.  _ Mother is dead. _ The thought made him involuntarily sad.  _ Mother is dead, and her killer is here. _ Suddenly all eyes were on him. “Um, hi, uh, I don’t know what’s going on here, I’m very confused—”

“You exploded the meteor, Paul,” the thing wearing Ted’s face said.

“When will you learn to join us?” Mr. Davidson asked.

They were all advancing menacingly now. “Feel your apotheosis finish! Join us!” Professor Hidgens was no less intense as an alien.

“You can’t stop it, Paul. You’ll be one of us soon.” Three voices, this time, Emma’s boss and one of the girls Paul had seen at the school and Bill, too.

Paul looked around, desperate now. One thing was what they were saying, but the constant cacophony of  _ he killed mother _ in his brain was making him disoriented.

“ _ I don’t wanna fight anymore. _ ” He was not quite surprised to hear his words come out as song. “ _ I don’t wanna resist anymore. _ ” And Paul gave up.

He watched with a sort of muted horror from a corner of his own brain as he joined the aliens in a sort of victory song. They’d lost. He’d lost.

Now that they were in his brain, they knew where he’d left Emma. The same muted horror came upon him as they all walked — no, danced — to her. Some small corner of his brain felt relief when she was gone.

* * *

Over the course of the next week or so, Paul learned how the aliens worked, and what their goal was. Despite the meteor — mother — being dead, they wanted to fulfill her wish of taking over the Earth, and Paul wanted to help them. He’d killed mother, but he was one of them now.

Most of the time, at least. He had moments where the tiny corner of himself broke through, where he wasn’t able to hear the cacophony of thoughts from his siblings, where Paul Matthews was in control of his own body. He didn’t know if the others had the same moments; he was often with his siblings when they happened, so he didn’t dare let on. He got weirdly good at harmonising despite not knowing the song.

Not that they sang always. They could talk normally, also for extended periods of time. They just couldn’t sing badly.

Paul made it off the island. His siblings were still there, hiding, pretending to be murdered. He contacted the military once he was there, and was thrown into their witness protection program as Ben Bridges. They asked him where he wanted to go, and he didn’t know.  _ With Emma, _ said one of his siblings in his head. “There was a woman… Emma Perkins. Did she make it?” Paul hoped she had. He hoped she hadn’t.

The general, Schafer, nodded and winked. “Unfortunately not, Ben. We’ll send you to Colorado with Kelly.”

_ Good, _ someone thought. “Good,” Paul repeated. Then they all disappeared. “General Schafer… I don’t think—” Then they were back. “I don’t think having Kelly and I travel separately is safe. I better wait for her.”

“Very well. She’ll be ready tomorrow. Get some rest, Ben.” She left, and Paul followed her. Walked back to the hotel.

He sang himself through his evening routine. “ _ And soon I will have Emma… It will be inevitable… _ ” The part of him that was still Paul was terrified. The part of him that was part of the family was thrilled. It was the bigger part.

The next day, Paul was fortunate enough to get control of his faculties when he saw Emma. “Oh my god! Paul! You made it!” She ran up to hug him, and he hugged her back.

He was about to tell her to run.  _ Now we come. _ It was too late. “ _ Emma… I’m sorry… You lost…”  _ He could feel her tense up.

“Paul?” She was confused, but not yet scared.

“ _ Emma… I’m sorry… You lost your way… _ ”

“Paul, you’re scaring me.”  
_I’m scaring me too,_ he thought, but he couldn’t say it; they were in control now, and they were coming. “_What if I told you I made it? And this is the life that I chose._” He wanted to tell her to run.

“What?”

“ _ Would you even believe it, Emma, do you believe in ghosts? _ ”

She was panicking and pushing him away, and Paul wanted her to win. He ran after her, still singing.

And singing. And singing. His siblings joined, and they kept singing. And kept running after Emma.

As they were taking a bow, Paul took over again, realising how morbid it was that they were bowing to essentially no one as Emma was still trying to escape. She’d fail, of course.

He lost control as he reached out for Emma, hugged her and kissed her. Not exactly how he’d imagined their first kiss, he had to admit.

She joined the song after that.


End file.
